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Red Wine Counters Some Negative Health Effects of Microgravity
astroengine writes "Great news for astronaut red wine aficionados: the alcoholic beverage can counteract some of the most troublesome physiological effects of microgravity. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on whether or not you have to pilot a spaceship), you have to drink a lot of wine to reap any benefit. These findings are fresh from the labs of French researchers (abstract) who found that by dosing unfortunate rats — hung by their tails to simulate microgravity — with resveratrol (a compound found in red wine), they could help stave off bone density loss and muscle atrophy. Does this mean resveratrol is an astronaut's best friend? Possibly, but judging by the quantities that are needed, it would most likely come in supplement form, rather than 750 ml bottles."
Booze counters lotsa stuff.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Fermented grapes...is there anything they can't do?
Why is it that every time the French see a problem, they throw red wine at it? I'm not being mean, just curious. They make fine cheeses, too, but you never see them suggesting cheese for bone-mass loss.
Well, science journalism. So, tentative results from an animal trial using a compound that happens to be found in some wines (mostly red, but not all red and in some whites), cocoa, and peanuts leads to a headline about drinking in space? Really?
The atrophy claim is likely caused by the rats using their muscles to try and get upright. This sounds a lot like French researchers getting bored and drunk at work and said "Hey, Lets hang rats by their tails!! Woo hoo!"
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Jesus walked on water and ascended bodily; two instances of micro gravity. He would normally need a lot of red wine to counter the effects, but as it turns out, that's His blood.
Red wine will fix most anything, yessssir, here have a little more !
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I suspect like most claims of positive "red wine" effects, it has nothing to do with wine and everything to do with grapes.
Drink grape juice, eat red grapes, take grape seed extract (and/or Resveratrol). None of it has anything to do with wine. People that claim "wine" instead of "grapes" just want a valid excuse to sell or drink alcohol :)
Well, science journalism. So, tentative results from an animal trial using a compound that happens to be found in some wines (mostly red, but not all red and in some whites), cocoa, and peanuts leads to a headline about drinking in space? Really?
Well, it's from the same "science" and "learning" channel that brought you American Chopper and Hot Rod.
Anyway, wait till this story hits the mainstream press a couple more steps down the line, it'll be turned into another "drinking red wine is good for you!" story. Then people will half-remember the bits they want to remember and a month later they'll be using this as some excuse to get totally shitfaced because they vaguely remembered something about Smirnoff Ice being good for you, and the more the better, etc.
Not entirely joking- there were stories in the UK press about how *very* high quality bitter chocolate (i.e. so much damn cocoa solids there literally wasn't room to pack them full of fat and sugar anyway) was supposedly good for you if you ate like *one square* a day. It was already blatantly an excuse for a "chocolate is good for you" story, telling people what they want to hear, and I was damn sure that people would remember it as "it's okay to eat a 200g bar of sodding Cadbury's Dairy Milk because it's good for you".
Sure enough, some time later, one of my work colleagues had a bog-standard chocolate bar and was telling me how chocolate was good for you. So, yeah.
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Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on whether or not you have to pilot a spaceship)
Doesn't the shuttle basically pilot itself at this point? Then again, I suppose you have a whole different sort of issues if your autopilot starts drinking...
To Red Wine! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems!
On the ISS, by the International Space Station Intergovernmental Agreement (Section 5.2), each country's law applies in the section it supplies. The American's do not allow alcohol in their sections, but I guess in the ESA and Russian modules, wine would be OK. Now, if we could just get the Dutch to launch a module, the astronauts could also enjoy some hash, which I am sure would be good for... something.
How does hanging a rat by its tail simulate microgravity?
Here, have a little troll food:
So your solution to finding new ways of living here on earth is to spend all your time and effort attacking nerds on a nerd website for liking space and astronauts.
Yeah, it's the space people who are irrational and nuts.
How can you end up face down in the gutter if 'down' is no longer well defined?
Have gnu, will travel.
said the ignorant dim-witted troll in a room full of devices brought about by the space age.
", ranted the unteachable cretin troll, the dozen communicating neurons firing in his microcephalic skull, completely oblivious to the history of integrated electronics, ignoring the smoke detector, ignoring the alkaline batteries, etc.
That's fine. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. As long as you hold that view you're one less person we have to plan for when the research acquired while going in circles yields dividends around other planets we orbit in circles, just as our planet goes in circles around our sun, as the Moon goes in circles around the planet.
There is one Curious parallel that epitomizes the stereotypical duality of your post however. You strike me as the type of Anti - Space, lets focus on earth Nascar lover. Worshiping painted tin cans on rubber wheels going in circles as fast as they can. I have sad news for you, our little tin cans go *way* faster, and our track is so big we have to race 100 miles above the surface of Earth. our track time is about 90 minutes, but we cover the circumference of the earth in less time than it takes a Nascar race to complete.
You can keep your silly little toys.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
WHO THE FSCK CARES!
What a waste of time and money.
...
Spin-offs are a lousy argument for putting humans into space. If you want neat devices for use here on Earth, give money to creative and smart people to develop those; don't give them money to create neat devices to use in orbit and then see if some of them can be adapted for use on Earth.
I think there are very good reasons to put machines into deep space, and possibly good ones to put humans into cis-lunar space. But the spin-off argument isn't one of them.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The contribution of resveratrol to the apparent beneficial effect of red wine is likely to be small. Red contains a ton of antioxidants and resveratrol is only one of them. In addition, the pharmacological dose administered to the animals is several hundred fold more than what we consume in red wine. Resveratrol is rapidly metabolized and therefore there is no additive effect either. It is strange that despite a large volume of literature on the potential of resveratrol in treating several diseases, human trails have been few!